Posts Tagged ‘haifa district court’

The mark of a statesman—or, in this case, a stateswoman—is their ability to retreat momentarily for the sake of future victories. In her very public and very aggressive contest against Supreme Court President, Justice Miriam Naor, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi) collected her winnings and stepped back, knowing she was not yet prepared to pay the full price of a complete victory.

Shaked is spearheading several concurrent moves, all of which have provided the context for a proposed bill by Yisrael Beiteinu MKs—with Shaked’s blessings—to deprive the Supreme Court members of the Judicial Appointments Commission of their veto power over Supreme Court candidates. The moves the Justice Minister was advancing behind the cover of the new bill were a Netanyahu cabinet request for a 7-month delay of the decree to demolish the Amona community in Samaria; a new Regulation Act to compel Arab claimants who prove they own the land belonging to Jewish communities to accept market value as compensation; and a list of appointments to the Supreme Court which the current Court members loath.

Last week, Justice Naor lost her cool, sending a leaked letter to Shaked telling her the proposed Judicial Appointments Commission bill was tantamount to placing a gun on the table. On Sunday the two women met and Shaked eventually consented to putting a temporary lid on her bill — depending on how well the court would deal with her proposed appointments to replace four retiring justices—that’s 4 out of 15—in 2017.

Shaked’s candidates are considered brilliant, and they are also critical of the judicial activism of the court over the past 40 years, since the Likud party for the first time won a decisive electoral victory and relegated the Labor party to what eventually became a perpetual seat with the loyal opposition.

There’s Prof. Gideon Sapir from Bar Ilan University, who has voiced his loud criticism of the high court for neglecting the national component in their decisions. Sapir was harsh in his criticism of the court’s support for the uprooting of Gush Katif’s Jews in 2005.

Then there’s Judge Yosef Elron, who enjoys the backing of Finance Minsiter Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) who is a member of the appointments committee, and also the support of the two members of the bar on the committee. The justices don’t like Elron and prefer to appoint in his place an insider, one of their own, Ron Sokol, the son-in-law of former Supreme Court Justice Theodor Or.

Shaked’s final four will likely include two rightwingers, an Arab and a centrist woman, such as Judge Tamar Bazak Rappaport, who also serves, as Vice Chairman of the Anti-Trust Tribunal, which deals with issues of cartels, monopolies and mergers.

Of the two rivals, Shaked turned out to be the one speaking softly and holding a big stick behind her back. Naor was loud and blustery, and it looks like she got her way — for now. But Shaked did not put down her big stick, and in the long and exhausting struggle the country’s judiciary will be undergoing soon, she likely plans to bring home a few wins.

Haifa (TPS) — Iman Kanjo, a 44-year-old teacher from the Arab town of Shfaram in northern Israel, was sentenced on Tuesday morning to 22 months in prison for attempting to join the Islamic State terrorist organization, also known as ISIS.

According to the indictment filed at Haifa District Court, Kanjo, an Israeli citizen, mother of five and a doctoral student in Islamic studies, intended to use her educational background to teach Islamic State’s extremist Sunni ideology, which centers around sharia (Islamic religious law) and jihad (holy war), to the young generation of the group’s combatants.

The indictment states that Kanjo went to Turkey with her father in August 2015 for a family trip and then disappeared.

On discovering that Kanjo was missing, her father told her husband in Israel, and her husband contacted the authorities. A cooperative effort by the Israel Police, the Shin Bet, and the Turkish authorities found that Kanjo was attempting to cross the border into Syria to join Islamic State. She was caught and arrested by the Turkish authorities along with some 30 other people from around the world who were attempting to join Islamic State as well.

Kanjo was taken back to Israel and put under arrest at Ben-Gurion Airport. She was indicted in September 2015.

During her interrogation by the Shin Bet, Kanjo revealed that for years she had wanted to live under a strict Islamic regime such as Islamic State. She began sharing updates from ISIS on Facebook and Twitter, and made contact with an operative who told her that he could help her enter Syria.

Kanjo has no previous criminal record, and her family knew nothing of her plans. In addition to the 22-month prison term, the judges gave her a one-year suspended sentence and a fine of 30,000 shekels (approximately USD 7,800).

A combined action of the Shabak and Israel Police has led to the arrest of an Israeli-Arab resident of Umm al-Fahm, Ibrahim Hassan Yousef Aghbariyya, 23, at Ben Gurion International Airport on June 10, on his way to join ISIS in Syria.

In his interrogation, Aghbariyya revealed that after having been exposed to ISIS videos and other content, he began to identify with the Jihaidst ideology of the Islamic State and with its actions, and decided to leave for Syria, to join up.

After collecting material online about the options available to him to reach Syria, Aghbariyya flew to Istanbul and boarded a connecting flight to the Turkish town of Gaziantep, not far from the Syrian border. Back in early May, a bomb attack outside the police headquarters in Gaziantep killed two policemen and injured 22 others.

Aghbariyya was picked up by Turkish police in short order and after a few days’ interrogation was expelled to Israel.

Aghbariyya’s Shabak interrogation also revealed that he had left his family a letter before leaving for Turkey, spelling out his intentions to join the forces of Jihad. Some of his close friends and acquaintances were aware of his plans and identified with his ideas.

Israel’s security apparatus has been watching out for individuals like Aghbariyya, who might be sent back by ISIS to take advantage of their privileged status as Israeli citizens to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel.

On Wednesday, Aghbariyya was indicted in Haifa District Court on serious security violations.

Haifa (TPS) – An Israeli-Arab terrorist has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for carrying out a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack at the Gan Shmuel Junction near Hadera in October, 2015.

Alaa Ziwad, 20, from the town of Umm Al-Fahm, committed the terror attack after arriving in his car at the junction where he saw two IDF soldiers – a man and a woman – standing at a bus stop. He accelerated, ran them over, and then exited the vehicle with a knife and stabbed the female soldier and a 17-year-old girl. He also stabbed a man who stopped his vehicle to help the other victims before being neutralized and apprehended.

The 19-year-old female soldier was very seriously wounded in the attack after sustaining stab wounds to her face and upper body. The other victims were lightly to moderately wounded in the attack.

According to the indictment, Ziwad decided to commit the attack after similar attacks were perpetrated in October that killed and wounded many Israeli civilians “against the backdrop of battles and debates relating to the Temple Mount and the Al-Aqsa mosque.”

“The offenses are extremely severe, both on their own and in the specific context,” wrote the judges in the verdict. “The defendant, an Israeli citizen, decided to carry out a terror attack to kill Jews only because they are Jews. The charges require severe punishment in order to convey an unequivocal message that everyone participating in such offenses will find themselves behind bars for a long time.”

Ziwad was convicted at the Haifa District Court of four attempted murders after he admitted to the offenses. In addition to serving 25 years in prison, Ziwad will also pay compensation to each of his four victims, amounting in total to NIS 340,000 (almost 90,000 USD).

Nawaf Athamneh, the 52 year old resident of Kafr Qara, NIF-funded public relations hack, and editor of the far left anti-Israel former Machsom (Checkpoint) website and other outlets was recently convicted of raping a 15 year old Israeli girl.

There are so many bad guys in this story you have to keep score; all deserve your ire.

THE CRIMES

Before Athamneh committed the actual crimes, he stalked his young victim through the personals section of a newspaper. He called himself “Amir,” pretending to be an Israeli, gained her confidence, claimed to obtain an incriminating photograph of her. With that, he had virtually complete control over the terrified girl as he threatened to show her family and community the photos. He then hounded her, blackmailing her into meeting him and then forcing her to commit various sexual acts. Then he claimed he videotaped those humiliations and promised her still more sexual and other degradations.

The girl finally confided in her sister, the sister told her mother, the mother went to the police, a trap was set and Athamneh was apprehended, tried and convicted.

But there’s more to the story.

Athamneh’s past has not yet been connected to his current crime. Yes, it is known he was an anti-Israel Arab Israeli, but the particular hypocrisy which has heretofore escaped the media’s notice is that Athamneh himself self-righteously charged others with violent sexual offenses: Israelis.

Athamneh was the media coordinator of an event entitled, “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality: Palestinians in the Shadow of the Wall.”

In the language describing the event, Athamneh and his colleagues discuss the brutal sexual control and violence of Israelis towards Arab Palestinians.

In a particularly chilling foreshadowing of the Athamneh’s own deviant behavior, he and his colleagues describe their event as one addressing how “sexuality and bodily rights are an integral part of human rights.”

An example Athamneh and his like-minded “gender studies” activists cited as undermining reproductive and sexual rights, “is the ‘nationality’ law in Israel, affecting people’s right to choose their partners.”

They describe Israel itself, as a whole, as causing “young girls and women” to suffer “serious violations of their bodily, sexuality and reproductive rights.”

The conference itself raised hackles at the time, in particular because of the provocative posters. There were a series of them, one which revealed the body and arm of a male Israeli soldier reaching towards the chest area of an Arab women, the other revealed the body and arm of a female Israeli soldier reaching towards the area of the sensitive body part of a male Arab.

The headline of the poster read: “Her husband needs a permit to touch her. The occupation penetrates her life everyday.”

The irony continues. Athmaneh and colleagues completed the description of their conference’s campaign by claiming it “highlights the need to intensify efforts aiming at protecting Palestinian men and women and to struggle against all forms of physical, sexual, psychological, political and social prejudice, oppression, discrimination and violence.”

So when they write they want to struggle against “all forms of physical, sexual, psychological, political and social prejudice, discrimination and violence,” did they also mean against Israeli Jewish girls?

The Jewish Press attempted to speak with Nawaf Athamneh before this story went to print, but his number has been disconnected.

The Jewish Press also attempted to speak with leadership at the New Israel Fund, which funded Athmaneh’s 2009 “My Land, Space, Body and Sexuality” conference as well as his organization, and which defended the organizations’ posters for the conference. There was no immediate response.

The 15 year old victim who finally was induced to overcome her mortification, who participated in the pursuit, trial and conviction of her torturer, and who implored, in a letter to sentencing judge Ron Shapira that a harsh sentence be imposed so as to deter others from engaging in similar brutalizing behavior.

But instead Haifa District Court Judge Ron Shapira decided to insult the young victim again.

Although Shapira said he agreed with the prosecution that the normal three to six year sentence for such crimes was appropriate, in this case he decided to depart from the appropriate sentence, in favor of attempting to rehabilitate the criminal.